NintendoLogic

1970s: Giant Baba vs. Billy Robinson 1980s: Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk, Great American Bash 1990s: 6/9/95 2000s: Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock Lesnar, No Way Out 2010s: Brock Lesnar vs. CM Punk, Summerslam

Thanks for the recs, guys. I'll post my thoughts after I've made it through all of them. I did watch Brody/Spoiler. Really good brawl, and a great performance by Brody. If more matches like this turn up, I'd say Brody is due for a re-re-evaluation.

John Cena tweeted support for the Women's March on Washington. https://twitter.com/JohnCena/status/822917247886913536

So I finally bit the bullet and signed up for this. I haven't been keeping up with this thread, so I apologize if this has been covered before, but is there any kind of consensus on five or ten must-see matches as a starting point?

Jack Brisco once said that he still would have gone into pro wrestling even if MMA had been around because he didn't like getting hit in the face.

I tried to watch the WK match and turned it off after about ten minutes. I actually like Okada a lot, so Omega pretty much has to be the worst wrestler on Earth to make me hate an Okada match that much. Anyway, I went to renew my subscription this morning, and I was a bit puzzled to see that one of the options is $32.99 for three months. A single month is $10.99, so it's actually more expensive than signing up for a monthly subscription and cancelling after three months, albeit only by two cents.

New Orleans celebrates its tricentennial that year, so there's that.

The 10/19/90 six-man had work on Kobashi's nose. And the 10/15/91 one had work on Misawa's.

But Rush is where all that breaks down. He wrestles like a heel and is clearly positioned as the heel in his feuds yet is classified as a tecnico. It reflects neither his in-ring style nor his moral alignment.

I don't think there's any particular thing Flair is the greatest of all time at, but there's no one who's better than him at everything. It all comes down to what you value the most.

Also, Satanico had done the same thing to Dandy in their October match.

Here's an important factor no one has mentioned yet: the predominance of lighter weight classes in Mexico. The traditional American focus on heavyweights is part of the reason why relatively few American stars have worked in Mexico and few luchadores have worked in the US outside of California and Texas. And plenty of fans just don't like smaller wrestlers in general, whether they be New Japan juniors, WCW cruiserweights, or luchadores.

Maybe I'm in the bubble, but I'm curious as to where you guys are encountering fans who categorically dismiss all wrestling from Mexico. I'm sure there are random dudes on Twitter who do that, just like there are ones who think that puro is just Japanese men chopping each other. But I don't know of anyone whose opinion carries weight in any organized fan community expressing that view.

I agree that there's a tendency for people who aren't really into lucha to treat it with kid gloves. But that only seems to apply to lucha. When people criticize Tanahashi, they don't limit themselves to saying he's not for them or bend over backwards to acknowledge the things his fans like about him. They flat-out say he sucks. I think it's because you'll get far more pushback for saying something ignorant about lucha than for saying something ignorant about puro, at least on this corner of the Internet. I've seen people say some of the dumbest shit imaginable about Kobashi without anyone saying a word in response when they'd get raked over the coals if they said something equivalently stupid about Negro Casas.

I honestly think that doing a deep dive to try to "get" a certain style of wrestling is a waste of time. I'm not saying that tastes can't shift or that context isn't useful. But if something doesn't have that immediate visceral connection with you, the amount of effort it takes to "get" it is far out of proportion to intellectual rewards it provides. I mean, come on. It's not Shakespeare, it's fucking professional wrestling. It's supposed to be comfort food, not something you try to choke down and learn to like the taste of because it's good for you.

World Class promoted several Star Wars shows on major American holidays. The ones on Independence Day and Labor Day were held at the Fort Worth Convention Center while the Thanksgiving and Christmas ones were held at Reunion Arena. In addition, they had the David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions on the first Sunday of May at Texas Stadium and the Cotton Bowl Extravaganza in October.

She broke Chaparrita Asari's nose in a match on Raw.

The thing is, it's only certain kinds of puro that American fans tend to gravitate toward. For the most part, it's limited to the All Japan crew and guys like Muta and Liger who wrestled high-profile matches in WCW. Stuff like shoot style is just as esoteric to most Americans as lucha, if not more so.

Who in lucha should have won MOTY/WOTY/Most Oustanding Wrestler but didn't?

On a national level, absolutely. It's not just about market share. It's also about barriers to entry. To be a nationally successful promotion, you need TV in a good timeslot on a channel people actually watch, which is pretty much an insurmountable obstacle. Part of that is due to TNA poisoning the well, though.

In matters of taste, "it's not for me" and "it sucks" is a distinction without a difference.

Smackdown seems to manage to do it.

I'm going to assume that it's because someone must have finally realized who would want to buy a book about some silver spooned rich girl's life experiences and the details of the career she has due to nepotism.

To me, the no-double-inductees rule is the most indefensible aspect of the WON HOF. If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had that rule, Led Zeppelin would be ineligible for induction because Jimmy Page was already in as a member of the Yardbirds.

Well, WWE. http://www.carlbeijer.com/2016/10/notes-on-wrestling.html Nothing terribly subversive so far. In fact, most of the analysis is Shoemaker-esque (he even cites Shoemaker at one point). But it has the potential to be interesting.